1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a management device and method for a print system comprising a data processor and a printer for printing a print job sent from the data processor, and more particularly to management of update process of software programs installed in the print system.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, office automation has been promoted in enterprise offices and a print system through a network has been spread with the development of an information processing apparatus. More specifically, there has been a system in which a plurality of host computers are connected to a printer through a network such as a LAN and a print job sent from the host computer is printed and output from the printer.
In such a print system, a software program adapted to a printer and generating a print job, that is, a printer driver is installed in a host computer, and a control program which is a software program for controlling the operation is installed in the printer. The printer driver and the control program have functionally close relations with each other, and therefore it is necessary to install the printer driver functionally adapted to the control program of the printer into the host computer.
The printer driver and the control program which are to be installed in these apparatuses are revised at any time to eliminate drawbacks such as a program bug or extend functions. In general, such revision of a software program is referred to as “version up” and identification indicative of the degree of the revision is referred to as “version”.
With the version up of the software program, a user reinstalls a software program having the latest version into the host computer and the printer. Consequently, the user can eliminate the drawbacks and can utilize new functions.
However, the user needs to always observe the version up for each software program, and furthermore, needs to confirm the adaptability of the software program to carry out an install work. These works are a burden to the user.
In order to solve such a problem, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 10-340163 has disclosed the art in which the control program of a printer, the software program of personal computer terminals and the like are automatically updated individually. More specifically, there has been disclosed a method for downloading a software program through a network to carry out version up.
In two or more software programs having functionally close relations, however, even if one of the software programs is updated, effects cannot be obtained or a normal operation cannot be carried out if the other software program is not updated. In the conventional invention, such software programs having functionally close relations have not been taken into consideration and cannot cope with the above-mentioned problem.